Robust approach to monitoring Lagrangian transport in very large volume

Abstract

State-of-the-art flow measurements utilize four or more high-speed cameras to perform highly-accurate Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) in small to medium-sized measurement volumes (Schanz et al., 2016). Hou et al. (2021) suggested a novel approach to allow measurements in significantly larger measurement volumes (O(10m³ )) while reducing the experimental effort. A single camera is used to track centimeter-sized soap bubbles in three dimensions by not only evaluating the bubble-center location but also the bubbleimage size. Possible applications of the suggested approach include - but are not limited to - measurements in industrial wind tunnels (Hou et al., 2021), full-scale measurements in the atmospheric boundary layer (Rosi et al., 2014; Toloui et al., 2014), and the characterization of airflow in indoor spaces, such as offices or classrooms (Kahler et al., 2020). In the context of the recent pandemic, the latter application could ¨help to reduce infection risk by designing appropriate air circulation. Hereby, frequent air exchange is recommended, while direct airflow from individual to individual should be avoided (WHO, 2020). The present study strives to optimize and simplify the experimental set-up as well as to characterize the accuracy of the novel single-camera approach. Figure 1(a) shows the set-up used to characterize the novel approach.